If you read these posts every day, you will have learned that I’m retiring from UNC at the end of this semester, am ecstatic about it, and am highly grateful for the career the university and my department has made available and possible for me, as well as for all the students I have had over the years, from still-teenage-recent-high-school grads to seasoned veteran PhD students. My colleague and friend Hugo Mendez, whom many of you know, has taken the lead to set up a final “Retirement Lecture” for me, to commemorate my farewell, on campus at UNC Chapel Hill.   It will be at 5:00 pm on Sunday December 7 on the UNC campus (exact building TBA).  The event will be free of charge and open to the public.  If you can attend in person, great!  Register (free) here.  My title is “The Greatest Discovery in the History of Biblical Studies.”  I will not tell you here what I think it is.  😊  I imagine the talk will be recorded and made [...]

1 Peter at a Glance 1 Peter claims to be written by Simon Peter, the close disciple of Jesus. Modern scholars have shown reasons to doubt this ascription. It may have been written in Peter’s name by a later Christian living near the end of the first century. If so, it is one of a number of early Christian pseudepigrapha allegedly written by Peter. The book is addressed to Christians in Asia Minor who have been experiencing persecution. The book is written to encourage them in their suffering, to explain why it is happening to them, and to urge them to remain faithful to God in the midst of it so that they may earn an eternal reward for their wrongful mistreatment.   Questions for Reflection What do you think are the strongest arguments that 1 Peter was not actually written by Peter? Do you find these arguments convincing?  Why or why not? In what ways does 1 Peter sound a lot like the teachings of Paul? Explain how a context of persecution [...]

I continue here with my posts that give brief bullet-point summaries of each book of the New Testament “At a Glance” along with questions for reflection to help think through some of the major issues each book presents. Here I cover the first two books of the “General (or Catholic) Epistles,” Hebrews and James. AT A GLANCE: Hebrews The book of Hebrews is anonymous, although it was eventually admitted into the canon by Christians who thought Paul had written it. Modern scholars are unified in thinking that he did not. The book was probably produced sometime near the end of the first century. It is frequently called an “epistle,” but it appears in fact to be a Christian homily or sermon—the earliest one we have, outside of those in the book of Acts. It is written for a group of Christians who have experienced persecution. Despite the book’s title (“To the Hebrews”), the recipients appear to have been Gentiles. The author’s purpose is to convince his listeners not to convert to Judaism. [...]

Some of you have asked when / where my next lecture tour would be, and now I've decided. Sometimes I do kinda obvious ones (Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, etc.) and sometimes less obvious (or, well, unexpected) ones because ... I've never done them before.  And so this time.  It's supposed to be flippin' amazing.  A cruise from Bergen Norway up the gorgeous coast to Svalbard and check out the polar bears (and lots of other things). It'll be this June.  I'll be lecturing on a topic of key interest for anyone connected with the blog.  (It will not be related to Polar Bears; others will be doing that.  'Cause we'll be seeing them). Wanna come?  I'll be giving out more information anon, but for now, here is the description that I've written for the forthcoming brochure.  Give it some thought for now, with more details coming soon. ******************************   On June 1-14, 2026, I’ll be giving lectures on a cruise traveling up the western coast of Norway to the incredible Svalbard [...]

Teaching has long been a passion of mine, even before I took my first university position at Rutgers in 1984, gulp, forty-one years ago.  After four years there I moved to Chapel Hill and have taught in the Religious Studies Department here since 1988.  And now I have decided it is time for me to retire.  This semester will be my last.  As of January 1, 2026, I will be gainfully unemployed. At least, at the university.  I will still be engaging – actually, having more time to pursue – my other academic interests: my research and publications (Books!), the Blog, and what we originally called BEPS (my company, co-owned with Chris Huntley, that produces online courses, holds conferences, provides consultation services, and so on; if you don’t know about it, see my website bartehrman.com). In short, now that I’m moving out of the ABC’s it will be almost entirely the BBB’s (Books, Blog, BEPS). Well, not exactly.  In addition I will also be able to put more attention to those things that matter most [...]

The previous two posts explained why scholars have such difficulty using the Gospels as historical sources, as explained by early Christianity scholar Marko Marina (see more about him here: https://tragoviproslosti.eu/about-me/).  This primer was mean to set the stage for the eight lectures given by a range of internationally known historical Jesus scholars at our New Insights Into the New Testament conference at the end of September. Marko ALSO provided overviews of what the lectures would  be about and why he thought the topics were important.   Here is what he said about the first four (to be continued in the next post), the lectures given by Mark Goodacre (Duke University), Helen Bond (University of Edinburgh), Dale Allison (Princeton Theological Seminary, emeritus), and Joel Marcus (Duke Divinity School, emeritus): Dr. Mark Goodacre: The Missing Pieces in the Quest for the Historical Jesus I think it was Martin Hengel who once estimated that nearly 80 percent of early Christian literature has been lost to history. That observation resonates strongly with anyone working in the field of antiquity: much of [...]